I would like to invite you
to take a look at several French examples to illustrate some of the key claims
made by this week’s authors about the role of language in society.
All of these could use
lengthier developments (and probably will in the course of the semester 😉),
but I would like to use them here to paint a sort of introductory big picture
of the situation in France. In retrochronological order:
1) The first one comes from
our Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer. In April 2018, in the heat of
new reforms of primary and secondary education, he mentioned in several
speeches and op-eds the importance of teaching the “passé-simple” (a rather
difficult past tense used mainly in literature). In November of the same year,
he was invited to a TV show called “Au tableau!” in which famous guests
standing at the black board have to answer questions from school children. And
of course… he made two mistakes attempting to conjugate the verb “to run” in
the passé-simple (which the children spotted and corrected right away). One
argument that he uses in the op-ed is that teaching this tense in school is a
matter of social justice.
2) In January 2016, an
orthographic change (harmonizing some of French spelling irregularities) that
had been adopted by other Francophone countries nearly 20 years prior, was
going to enter the French national curriculum for the first time. One of the
new rules was to remove the circonflex accent (the little pointy hat or house
roof looking one) from some 2000 words. It was met with public outrage and many
people started using the #JeSuisCirconflexe hashtag (in distasteful reference
to #JesuisCharlie). To my knowledge this is the event in French history that
sparked the most citizen sociolinguistics statements, jokes, arrests, insults, disputes,
protests and even a rap song. Several things are noteworthy in this example:
-
many people who cried out for the end of the circonflex as a sign of decadence
of the French language did so in messages that often contained several
ungrammaticalities;
-
the French Academy that was also vocal in criticizing the partial loss of the
circonflex was vehemently against said accent when it first appeared;
-
the hashtag was born on social media and started a trend of jocular tweets. The
platform likely exacerbated the movement;
-
the circonflex is often found in hypercorrection as people have used circonflex
where they should not (I’ve been guilty of one systematic error of the kind!).
This is a sign of 1) the fact that people don’t know how to use because its use
is often arbitrary, 2) it is an esthetic or elitist diacritic sign that people
are attached to for reasons that have nothing to do with language.
3) The same year (and even
month) also saw the coinage of a new phrase, glottophobia (glottophobie
in the original), by sociolinguist Philippe Blanchet. It describes any type of
contempt, rejection, hatred, exclusion, or discrimination based on linguistic forms
(languages, dialects, language uses…) deemed inferior. Phone testing have shown
discriminations based on accents to exist. However, language does not appear as
a protective class in the first article of the Constitution which establishes
the principle of equality of all citizens. That could explain why language is
such a convenient proxy for other types of discriminations. While people would
have some reservations to comment on someone’s skin color or apparent social
status, most of us find it ok to mock someone’s accent or use of language.
These events to me seem to
confirm that:
-
in our society where signs of wealth can’t be trusted anymore (where ripped
jeans can cost hundreds of dollars), language, maybe even more so than before, often
serves as a social marker and proxy for social class, education, race or
gender. This is clearly exemplified in instances of phone testing for apartment
searches both in France and in the US as well as Cameron’s example of
gendered-based comments on language use. This is one of the reasons why I
believe that linguistic purism is still so prevalent (especially in France) and
that it serves a gatekeeping function.
- it is necessary/more interesting to look not only at how people talk but also how they talk about
language. In both the minister and the circonflex examples we see obvious gaps
between a person’s discourse about language and actual language use. This is
also what Labov has demonstrated with the difference between someone’s
perception of their speech and the actual sound produced. This gap, be it
phonological or grammatical, shows the prevalence of linguistic ideologies.
People defending a sort of speech that they don’t even attain.
One preliminary conclusion
arising from these examples and readings, is the need to improve how we teach and talk about language in schools. We should learn about language change and the debates surrounding
them throughout time instead of being made to believe that language is a sacred
form consubstantial with culture and that each mistake is an offense to the
nation. Getting an historical perspective (similar to what Shea offers) would
help us understand that people have always disagreed about language use and that
the norm (especially for a language vastly spoken on different continents) is
always a constructed ideal.
To finish on a personal/funny
note. I think one of my own linguistic pet peeves is orthography. I usually get
irate at street signs that contain mistakes/typos, often thinking that it’s a
bad example for children learning to write (which also explains why graphic
puns in daycare names drive me crazy: “kidz”, “Cincere Childcare”) and also pondering
how among the different people involved in the creation of the sign, none of
them noticed it. The target of my anger has often been a convenience store
located on 63rd street and called “Convinience store”. I drove by it
today and for the first time I thought it was actually marketing genius.
Whether intended or not this is the only convenience store I have ever paid
attention to. And just like the examples above, the sign worked because I
remembered them and not their properly spelled counterparts.
I agree that we -as you suggested- need to change the way we talk about language in schools, not limited to foreign language instruction. This, at the very least, would mean to redirect the focus from an obsession with form towards a more holistic focus on language as communication and ideology.
ReplyDeleteI think student are ready for this because these kinds of discussions would address many of the concerns they currently have as they are trying to navigate a world around them that is subjected to ever faster changes. But we in the foreign language departments have to act fast. The rug is pulled out from under our feet as enrollments are shrinking. University deans take that as a welcome signal for defunding language education.
Regarding your comment and Shea’s argument that languages have histories and always experienced change, I find it curios that those same voices that lament language change are only referring about changes in the present. They often have no problem acknowledging change that happened in the past. In fact, such changes are rather glorified as heroic efforts to emancipate from oppressive powers, or to develop a more logic and complex medium, or to create national unity, etc. These voices would probably agree with Shea that languages have changed throughout history. When they lament current changes or the current decline of language, they are -as you said- trying to act as gatekeepers.
Thank you Sophie for sharing these events. I am always interested in language ideologies around languages (and in countries) with regulatory authorities like the Académie française and the Real Academia Española and also languages which don't have this, like English. I agree that we need to talk more about how we talk about language and explore the history of how such bodies came to be and why and the language classroom is an essential place for this conversation to happen. I think language ideologies are difficult to challenge, but not it's impossible and I think accepting the dynamic nature of language is certainly helpful. Even while knowing, this I am still put off by the use of "then" for "than" and "your" for "you're"!
ReplyDeleteThe idea of thinking critically about the language we use and challenging our own assumptions about pronunciation, grammar, word choice, etc. is extremely powerful and liberating. In a way, I feel like it invites us to embrace our identity, accept not only who we are, but also what we sound like, which has lots of implications for language instruction. And at the same time, I feel like it pushes us to become more respectful and tolerant of the way other people sound and make use of a language. But in the midst of all of those great feelings and ideas, we need to deal with the “messiness” of living in a community where we have discriminatory behaviors like the one mentioned in your comment for this week’s readings: glottophobie.
ReplyDeleteI cannot say I am surprised or even shocked at that. I also cannot say I think less of the French people. What I can say, however, is that I have done it… I have laughed at the way southern people from my country sound like, I have thought that they sound uneducated, and I have also been on the receiving end of that, and have experienced people laugh or make jokes at the way I speak. And so today, with more knowledge about these matters I try to understand why and for what purpose we engage in this kind of practices. Maybe it is because of ideological, historical, or economic reasons. Maybe it has to do with identity formation, developing a sense of belonging, or as mentioned in one of the readings for last week it has to do with building a sort of wall around our linguistic communities as we become part of them.
What to do about it? It seems like the answer is to continue to have these conversations about language, and to raise awareness. But I am struggling a little bit with understanding what to do about the immediate implications that speaking a non-standard form may have for somebody. For example, in the country I come from, there’s a group of people referred to as “flaite” that according to UrbanDictionary means:
flaite
A Chilean Spanish word to describe people from the lower classes, who speak a lot of slang and sometimes steal things. The equivalent of a British chav and something like white trash in the States.
Persona 1: Quién te robó tu bolso?
Persona 2: Un chico puro flaite, weon! Por la chucha! Po.
#chile#chav#white trash#cuica#thief#lower class#slang#pokemón#pelolais
So, if I were in Chile, and had a “flaite” student I would probably feel pressured to have them speak “better” Spanish, and failing to do so could even be regarded as a matter of social justice.
Anyway, we can talk more about this in class. I think I have mixed feelings about this week’s readings.
Also, I found these two links that thought could help furthering this discussion:
https://www.npr.org/2015/07/23/425608745/from-upspeak-to-vocal-fry-are-we-policing-young-womens-voices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_KKLkmIrDk
Hi Sophie!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this incisive and informative post :) I’m on a time crunch so please forgive my brief questions.
1. I’m fascinated by the example of the “passé-simple”. Why does the Minister make the argument that “teaching this tense in school is a matter of social justice”? I hear similar arguments about certain “classical Chinese” texts and language constructions, etc.
2. I value your insight into the Constitution. The Constitution that governs Taiwan also does not mention language (something I had not noticed!). It seems that language enters into our constitutional laws mainly when they relate to freedom of speech, hate speech, or media. Any thoughts?
Thanks!!! See you in class :)
Andrew
Thank you for sharing the examples of citizen sociolinguistics in France! Although the language contexts discussed in our readings are centered on English-speaking communities, your examples serve as meaningful reminders that citizen sociolinguistics, or simply talk about language, occurs in every language and in every country.
ReplyDeleteI resonated with your point on language as a proxy for discrimination and social marginalization (is it a proxy though? or is it simply another form?), and I agree that even as we become more attuned to the ways people are discriminated for their race, class, ability, etc., language mockery and comments on an individual's (typically non-"standard") accent often get a pass.
Mainstream Asian American discourses, for example, are quick to point out the ways in which we experience racism (and if I may diverge and critique these discourses further for a moment, these ways are often just surface-level microaggressions that don't delve into systemic and institutionalized processes of racism), but rarely do we discuss our problematic use of the term "fob". For those who aren't familiar with the term, "fob" is a noun, short for "fresh off the boat", and today is used to describe any Asian person who is a recent immigrant, largely typified by their "foreign" accent or "broken English", but also by certain behaviors and physical appearances. Not only does this term erase the history of Vietnamese boat people, but it mocks individuals within our own community - often our own parents and grandparents. I could go on and on about how this came about from an academic standpoint, but my main point is that here we have another context in which we can see how linguistic discrimination may be overlooked even as discussions about other "isms" are becoming increasingly salient and widespread. We do, as you mention, need to improve the ways we teach and talk about language in schools. And while schools are central sites of learning, I think it's also important to remember that learning occurs everywhere and anywhere, and that we can consider too how we as citizen sociolinguists can teach and talk about language outside of school contexts as well.
Thanks for sharing these events with us, Sophie! You point up a really interesting fact that the people, who contradict vehemently to language changes, usually make errors in their language usages. There is a discrepancy between their assertions about language and their actual language use and performances. The same thing happens frequently in China. I can always find it keep occurring in Chinese social media, commentary sections of newspaper as well. In China, language changes take place from time to time. For instance, there are many multi-tone words in Chinese. Each tone is normally used under specific conditions. Sometimes people confuse the use of the tones and misuse them. When the error takes place, we always check an authoritative dictionary named Morden Chinese Dictionary to check it. However, If a tone is misused by many people and this tone might replace other alternative tones. The editorial board of the dictionary, including Institute of Linguistic (CASS), linguistics with reputation, will revise the authoritative definition and uses of the tones. Namely, the mistaken use of one tone in a context might be accepted or even become correct. Once a wrong usage is accepted or even enjoy legitimacy, some people will feel they have the obligation to oppose the reform of language and keep the language purity. While they normally can’t achieve their goals, as the innovation is signed and declared. But it is interesting to look deep into why they feel they have this obligation to conduct language arrest, and what language ideology is connected to it.
ReplyDeleteHi Sophie,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post and found a lot of similarities with Korean contexts as well. Orthography is also one of my pet peeves and often times I find myself getting annoyed at people in educational field (especially teachers) who use wrong spelling and spacing in their written language. But I acknowledge that since those rules are always subject to change, we need to be more vigilant in "hypercorrecting" people's uses because they may prove right in the future. From teachers' perspective, it seems really important to expose students to the fact that although there may be certain prescriptive rules to language uses and orthography, those rules have changed over time and that how the language uses we currently see around us are just one phase of the language in development. Understanding the reasoning for those changes would also help students reflect upon what people consider to be appropriate and not for language uses in different contexts.
Yes, thank you Sophie for this thoughtful blog post! I agree with your point about how language norms are fundamentally "constructed ideals" -- and I also believe strongly that the way we teach & talk about language both in schools *and* outside of scholastic contexts (as Claudia and Cheryl emphasized) could benefit from some reconsideration. I want to play devil's advocate to one of your concluding points, though, when you suggest that in contemporary society, language perhaps serves as a proxy for social features like class, educational attainment, race, and gender more so than before. I don't dispute at all the myriad ways that language, on individual and group levels, can communicate information about the speaker's upbringing, stance, identity, etc. as much as it enables them to accomplish some formal communicative process (like sharing an idea or asking a question). However, I think that in the same ways we can mis-assess people's "true" level of affluence by surmising that if they're wearing ripped jeans, they maybe have a lower level of wealth and can't afford to purchase unripped jeans -- because as you point out, some people choose to buy designer ripped jeans for exorbitant amounts of money -- it is also possible to misconstrue facets of people's identities by linking their ways of speech to the identities that are stereotypically indexed to whatever the relevant speech feature is. I guess the main point I'm trying to make is that language is as layered a dimension of (social) identity as other "social" features like class, race/ethnicity, etc. are -- and so it makes sense to proceed with caution/careful consideration when engaging with language in any capacity.
ReplyDeleteUnrelated to these first comments, another French-specific sociolinguistic phenomenon that I recently became aware of is "l'écriture inclusive" ("inclusive writing") -- that breaks certain Académie française norms of agreement in plurality and gender in an effort to write in more inclusive, welcoming ways. For example, I was taught that in French, the "masculine" gender is the default gender agreement in French -- so it would technically be "correct" to address a roomful of all females and one male as "tous" (all, masc. plural) rather than "toutes" (all, fem. plural). Using l'écriture inclusive, one could address such a mixed group by saying "Bonjour à tou.te.s". I'm curious if you are aware of how this movement has been received in French society, at its various levels? I'm also curious if other people have thoughts on the ideal ways that language might continue evolving as social perceptions of previously "fixed" concepts like gender, class, etc. become viewed as more and more fluid.
Thank you, Sophie, for the interesting blog post!
ReplyDeleteI also think that linguistic purism is so prevalent. Unfortunately, many foreign language teachers demonstrate the ideology of linguistic purism in language classes. For example, I saw Chinese teachers correcting Chinese heritage learners' pronunciation in higher education institutes since they thought that the students were not speaking “standard Mandarin”. I think it will be of great importance to incorporate a sociolinguistics perspective to the curriculum of language education.
Hi Sophie!
ReplyDeleteI thought it was very interesting that you were talking about the way people are defending the ^ " for reasons that have nothing to do with language". I think that this shows how deeply cultural our language is and can become. This is even more interesting because of how you mentioned it was very difficult for them to accept it in the first place and now they are upset it may vanish. It is amazing how even though people did not use it correctly, they still liked it. Maybe it was because it seemed very "french" and that not many other languages use that symbol? Or maybe its my ignorance, but I cannot think of any other languages that use it at the moment. It is definitely not used in English or Spanish that I know.
Also, how they were using it was telling of their social class. This reminds me about how in schools the English variations also have a hierarchy. For example, the textbooks are all written in MAE, the writing standards are MAE forms of writing and oral storytelling. Although, if you are NOT a MAE speaker, this could pose a problem for you. This could make someone appear "lower" in class due to the variation of English they use. Even someone who does not speak the language fully could be stereotypically seen as "not smart" because of the lack of knowledge of speaking or writing the language.
Thank you for allowing me to ponder these thoughts and for your insightful post. Somehow I feel comforted to know that the language stereotypes are not only a problem in American schooling, but in France and possibly elsewhere in the world as well!
Hi Sophie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing the interesting history and linguistic change about French. I agree with you that we should not only focus on "how people talk" but also pay attention to "how people talk about language", because people's perception of language might be different from what they actually use the language, as grammar is not usage.
As for the language ideology, although it's difficult to change language ideologies, language ideologies shape and are reshaped through social interactions. Prestige is contextualized even as it is shaped by broader social forces. Race, gender, social class and other forms of social differentiation are not independent variables but rather co-constructed with language ideologies. That's one of the reasons that we need to turn to social interactions and the actual usage to explore language change.
Hi Sophie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting such a thought-provoking post and for the discussion in class the other day. In reading some of the comments, I came across Peizhu's on how some present-day language classrooms emphasize fossilized prescriptivist notions as opposed to entering a dialogue on the language choices that people make and how these choices can reflect how they are perceived. I too have seen this in many classrooms and much like you both, find it puzzling to pigeon-whole students into a one-size-fits-all notion of language.
Therefore, it is essential to communicate this information to our students not only here at Penn, but fomenting this linguistic wonderment at a young age in the K-12 system. It is here were most of our students will begin to form their values and by exposing them at a young age to this idea to discuss language choices can help them be more open and perhaps more sympathetic listeners.